The mail agent replied, “No, I have only turned the light down.” The mail agent showed him the registered mail, saying, “There it is,” and added, “You are doing the worst thing you ever did in your life. You will get the U. S. Government after you, and there are not $20,000 in the pile.” “That don’t make any difference,” said the robber; “I will take them anyhow.” He left the car and said to the mail agent, “If you don’t want to get hurt, shut the door and keep it shut until the train leaves here.” He gave the packages he got out of the mail car to number two, who was guarding the fireman, and told me to get up on my engine and pull out. I had started up on the engine when he told me to sit in the gangway between the tender and engine. Number one then said: “Do anything you want to get steam up.” We were there ten minutes getting up steam. During that time he said he worked on a section once--though not on this road--and was discharged and a negro put in his place. He then decided not to work any more for a living. He said he had been around towns and had heard people say what they would do if they were “held up.” “What can a man do,” I asked, “in the fix you have me in?” “Do as I tell you.” he replied. When I got steam up he said, “Hurry up to State Line, and send a message up and down the road, so they can get after us. Tell the operator I say to hurry up about it. Tell the boss of those cars (meaning the express cars) to put steps on them, or I will stop robbing them. Don’t ring the bell or blow the whistle,” he concluded, “or I will shoot into the engine.” He told me, going down to the bridge, that he came here to rob this train because there was a boast in the papers last spring that he could not rob it, and he just wanted to show them what he could do. The other two men, while we were talking at the engine, had gone out in the bushes. While going to the engine with me he told number three to put the messenger back in his car. When I got on the engine to start he said, “Holler to those boys on the other side, and tell them to get back from the train.” I thought he referred to his men, but saw none. In coming down from the station he said he had men and tools to do the job with. * * * * * The man described by Engineer Therrill as number one is easily recognized as Rube Burrow, number two as Joe Jackson, and number three as Rube Smith. The trestle at which the robbery was committed was undergoing repair by a force of bridge men, and the train was in the habit of stopping and then proceeding slowly across it. When the train stopped, therefore, Messenger Dunning supposed it was on account of the bad condition of the trestle, and gave little thought to the matter. When hailed by the engineer, who had been instructed by the robbers to call him to the door, the messenger found himself, on facing about, covered by revolvers through the grated or iron barred door of the car, the outer wooden door being open.